Laboratory Management

About Lab Management

Within the Office of the President, the Laboratory Management Office (LMO) is responsible for management of contract administration and governance at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and of UC's parent obligations as an owner of Los Alamos National Security (LANS) and Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), LLCs. The LMO is headed by Kimberly Budil, Vice President.

The LMO contains two main organizations: Operations & Administration and Laboratory Programs.

Background

In 1991 the University formed the Laboratory Administration Office (LAO) as part of its commitment to enhance the oversight of the laboratories’ administrative and operational management. Robert W. Kuckuck was appointed to direct the new office in mid-1992.

Kuckuck, a senior manager at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before joining the university, returned to Livermore in 1994 as its deputy director for operations. Kuckuck was succeeded by Carl Henning and Robert Van Ness. In 2001, UC created the position of Vice President for Laboratory Management (VPLM), which was held by John McTague until 2002. In 2003, the Regents appointed retired Admiral S. Robert Foley as Vice President for Laboratory Management. VP Foley held the position until he retired in early 2009, after which Bruce Darling assumed the role of VPLM. Darling retired in 2012. Glenn Mara was appointed Vice President by the Regents, effective July 1, 2012, until he retired on April 30, 2014. Kimberly Budil was appointed by the Regents as Vice President for Laboratory Management effective May 1, 2014.

In its first year, the LAO successfully fostered the philosophy and initiated the practice of partnering between the laboratories, the DOE Operations Offices and the University. Functional teams were also established at the labs with continuous quality improvement as the framework.

Since then, and now called the Laboratory Management Office (LMO), the LMO staff continues to work with the laboratories and DOE to further develop efficient, performance-based systems, which include self-assessment and corrective actions.

Programs

The Laboratory Programs Office (LPO) has the responsibility for the management and oversight of all programmatic work and science and technology (S&T) activities at Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. The goal of the office is to promote and demonstrate outstanding scientific and programmatic performance at the Laboratories in service to the nation.

Specifically, in the programs/S&T area, it is responsible for:

Providing S&T oversight of the two LLC Laboratories and LBNL.

Working with S&T and mission leaderships at all three Laboratories to increase the quality and vitality of the scientific enterprise.

Leading S&T collaboration efforts between the LLC Laboratories and the UC campuses.

Engaging the UC Academic Senate and related academic functions.

Working with the UC Office of Research and Graduate Studies regarding UC Campus-National Laboratory collaborative research projects.

Establishing protocols and leading the ongoing processes for effectively engaging LBNL leadership and LLC Boards of Governors with external peer review functions.

Supporting programmatic peer review at LBNL and the LLC Laboratories to access the heath and vitality of Laboratory science and technology.

Operations & Administration

The highest priority of the Operations and Administration unit is to facilitate the achievement of excellence in the management, productivity, and performance of laboratory operations and administration, and to assist the laboratories in the adoption and implementation of appropriate performance-based measurement and continuous improvement processes.

Operations, led by Anita Gursahani, works with the laboratories and the DOE in functional areas such as:

Laboratory Management - assessing the quality of laboratory leadership in such areas as communications of principles and goals, support of operational and administrative requirements, and relations with internal and external constituencies.